The present invention relates to conveying and off-loading an apparatus used in machines for the automatic selection of agricultural products such as fruit.
The apparatus of the present invention is an improvement upon similar apparatus used in automatic sorters for fruit and the like, disclosed for example in the U.S. Pat. No. 4,106,628 to Warkentin et al. filed Aug. 15, 1978, a machine which sorts fruit on the basis of weight and color, and which monitors position, color and weight as the fruit moves from examination stations to discharge stations.
Reference is made to the above mentioned patent for a detailed explanation of sorting machines.
Reference is also made to the U.S. Pat. No. 4,569,434 to Horii et al., to the British Patent Application No. 2,143,491A to A. J. Warkentin, and to the British Patent No. 2,126,356A of Kabushiki Kaisha Maki Seisakusho for additional disclosures of apparata using holders during the transportation of the fruit along a conveyance path, or during examination by one or more detectors.
These patents disclose holders which are tiltable about one side in order to effect the discharge from the holders. However, like the previously cited Warkentin et al. patent, neither do the devices of these other patents permit rotation of the fruit during the examination of the surface, nor mutually combined means for measuring the weight of the fruit while it is loaded on a roller.